Using energy wisely

{ March 27, 2007 @ 7:38 pm } · { In the news, Random streams of conciousness }
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I love the random trivia throughout the free paper available to weekday train travelers and always look for a seat with one tucked in the side if I don’t have a book with me. Tonights gem was a small piece reporting a study on the lure of sweet treats. It apparently found that those who nibbled on something yummy often got their tasks done. My favourite suggestion is that it sometimes takes valuable mental energy to resist the temptation of chocolate or lollies, which results in a depletion of the resources and will you have to finish what it is you’re trying to do.

I’ve been thinking about ways to get back into blogging, as a way of recording what I’m thinking and have learned recently. I thought trying some non work/web related topics would help. Specifically, I hope that some one else having as much trouble as me finding out information on a certain topic might find my post and benefit from the research I’ve done. The first idea I have is to write up a bit of a review on my new phone the Nokia 6300 (I love it!) with all the bits that I was trying to find out, rather than the usual regurgitation of spec pages.

If I could just feed my inner monster some of the chocolate it’s begging for (thank you all retail stores with Easter displays up for the past month), I might be able to sit down and write that review.

So it’s been a little while

{ December 5, 2006 @ 8:20 am } · { Adventures, In the news }
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I did try to be all enthusiastic about blogging but as you can see it lasted all of about 2 weeks. Consider this the second attempt. I often have the thought of “that’s something I could blog about” when a certain event occurs or I read something but I just can’t get over that hurdle of doing it, most of the time I’m not in a position to immediatly write about something and just forget.

Well, here’s something I just couldn’t get past… SMH has reported that apparently there are a bunch of people who want Australia and New Zealand to merge into one big happy country. Hilarious to me, but even funnier is imagining the reactions of anyone living outside either country and their close neighbours, a confused look followed by “But I thought… aren’t they already?”. I understand as well, no visa to get in for Aussies, sure, but I didn’t even get a stamp on my passport.

I actually like New Zealand, had a great time there on holildays last December/January and look forward to going back there again. It’s a great place for a first international trip, similar enough that you’re not completely disoriented, but a different landscape to take in. My biggest hurdle was the give-way-to-your-right-no-matter-what rule when driving, I got used to one way bridges with train tracks and being asked for a pin when getting money out (sorry? No I don’t have a pen on me, it’s savings not credit I shouldn’t need to sign). I also love that the Maori got it right – one language that could be used to communicate anywhere with anyone (if I remember correctly), how many misunderstandings can happen when you don’t have a common language to communicate with someone? Surely that saved a lot of fighting.

If we could some how tow New Zealand a little closer – say, close enough for a bridge or ferry between the two I’d vote for it. Plenty of things will need negotiating, just don’t touch the dialect, the polarities where they exsit will be amusing for some time yet, “fesh and cheps” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Wait a minute, there goes my house *blink*

{ September 27, 2006 @ 7:55 pm } · { Adventures }
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For the first time -ever- in the 8 or so years I’ve been catching the train by myself, I missed my station. For the last 3 or 4 months I’ve been catching the same trains at least 4 nights a week, I could surely get on and off with my eyes closed if I had to but the problem was they were stuck in a book. I keep thinking I need to make a list of all the books I’ve read and maybe if someone sees it and has read some they might be able to recommend me some more (not that I don’t have enough for the time being). So for the record right now I’m almost finished Jeffery Zeldman’s Designing with Web Standards, awesome read and just the starting point for about a billion things I want to look into more.

How not to make a bridge banner

{ September 9, 2006 @ 3:51 pm } · { Adventures }
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Josh's Banner My sister’s boyfriend had been in England playing cricket for 6 months-ish and Thursday was the day of his return, great day for them and great for the rest of us because we no longer had her sulking around the house. In order to celebrate, she wanted to make one of those banners to hang up one of the bridges they would pass under on the way home from the airport. I was enlisted to help out and brought along my other half to, of course we couldn’t just do a normal bed-sheet-and-spray-paint effort, instead we bought a bunch of material and cut out huge letters of the white fabric to go on the dark blue back. Tuesday night I helped draw and cut out letters, then about 11:30 started at the sewing machine to sew on the tags to tie the thing up (one in each corner, one in the middle on the sides and two on the top and bottom – so 10 in total). Not only am I a shocking sewer (but still better that the other two) but I was dead tired, and fell asleep shortly after on the lounge while the others went on the glue all the letters on the sheet. As you can see the results were pretty impressive.

Fast forward to the next morning, and after weeks of gorgeous weather, rain is forecast. All day at work I was staring out the window hoping it wasn’t too bad and it wasn’t.  My sister left us with the banner and we scouted out the potential bridges after work, the plan being to go back about midnight and hang it up . It had to be late, a) for dark cover, b) Sister’s Boyfriend’s Dad would have driven under the bridges that night but his parent’s didn’t know he was coming home. About 11pm it pours, we wait it out and jump in the car about 11:45, again in pours so we wait in the car near the target bridge till it eased off and we ran out. Again it started, light at first so we started tying up the banner then it pours on us and the sign and the umbrella. Afterwards we did a loop and drove under the bridge, pulling over to get a couple photos – lucky.

The next morning on the way to work we drive under the bridge, on the approach there is a blue area but no white, turns out the glue wasn’t really water resistant, all the letters came off and were half dangling off the edge of the bridge under the big dark blue reactangle hanging proudly.

Moral to the story: spray paint on a bed sheet might not look quite as pro, but at least rain wont wash it away (if it does, at least it didn’t take you all night to make).

Hrmm… where to start?

{ September 7, 2006 @ 6:42 pm } · { Random streams of conciousness }
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I suppose somewhere, anywhere is the best place. Bare with me while I get this hang of this. With help and encouragement from by boss to start blogging, I figure I might as well give it a go. It’s almost a requirement of my job (I should probably double check the contract) to involve myself in such a phenomenon and once I do get into it I hope this will become a bit of a playground for me to further my CSS skills (or lack of, as it seems to be for now) and mash up the currently sparse bits and pieces of my personality, scattered throughout the web.

There’s no particular topic or style I’m going for as yet, more than anything this blog will probably document my effort of finding things to be interested in and passionate about, related to my work and otherwise. After four years at Uni I’ve stepped out and just been blown away by everything that I don’t know, and even more so by what I’m not even aware of. The first few months out I had a “break” to recuperate and observe all that I had somehow missed during the previous 12 months while studying and writing an honours thesis. I took my time, half-heartedly job searching to keep my financiers (read:parents) happy but thinking there was no way I could stay in the area and get a great job at the same time.

Then, almost accidentally due to a little personal networking, I applied for a position at Omnidrive and was hired as a developer in the Australian office, close to home and not mind-numbingly dull, but more about all that later. The past 3 months I’ve been working here my eyes have been blown wide open and I’m becoming more and more aware of what I don’t know, but more importantly, I’m being shown where to look to find out all sorts of things. So if nothing else (though I’m sure this wont be the case) right now my curiosity is being well and truly fed.

No promises about frequency or quality of postings for the time being, but I’ll be trying to amuse myself and in the process hopefully amuse or entertain anyone wishing to read my shiny new blog. Till next time…